Thursday, November 8, 2012

Frankenweenie Visual Development PART 1!!!

By now, this art is 2-3 years old, so... Yeah. Frankenweenie was the first animated film project to hire me as a visual development artist, and looking back on my (shitty) portfolio, its a miracle they had that much faith in me to begin with, thank you Andy Nicholson and Troy Nethercott!

A little side note: I was LITERALLY hired at CTN expo, which is right around the corner, so all you art students take heed!

The team was small but tight knit, led by crazy awesome Production Designer Rick Heinrichs (who at the time was also designing Captain America... no big deal) and art director Andy Nicholson. We had a 9 member team stationed at Culver Studios where Tim Burton was finishing up Alice, and for 4 months we hunkered down and tried to figure out what New Holland would be like. I learned so much on the project, and really got a sense of what it was that I wanted to do with my art. More importantly, it introduced me to some of the best people I know, and the chance to work with each one of them again.

I got pretty lucky in the sense that since I mostly focused on the Frankenstein house set and the cemetery set, and a little bit of the neighborhood, they didn't get cut from the final film. You know, because Victor needs a place to live, and Sparky needed to die.

Great looking work Helen. My daughter is 11 and she liked the movie. Her eyes just sparkled when I showed her this stuff and said "Yep, she was one of my teachers". Now I've got serious cred with this kid. Thanks!